


A Dangerous Lifestyle

by matchsticks_p (matchsticks)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bickering, Fugitives, M/M, Multi, Now complete, On the Run, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Secret Relationship, Size Kink, Slow Burn, the main plot is Bucky and Sam have a lot of secret sex, the sub-plot is Bucky and Sam have a lot of embarrassing sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-16 09:47:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8097463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/pseuds/matchsticks_p
Summary: They're fugitives, on the run from not one but several of the most powerful and dangerous organizations in the world. And that's not even what's going to be the death of Sam. (It's Bucky. Bucky is going to be the death of Sam.)





	1. Chapter 1

Sam knew he was in trouble the moment Bucky came back to himself. 

Bucky had glanced up at Steve through the mess of his hair and said, "Your mom's name was Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

And then, while Steve had been busy struggling with the lump in his throat and trying not to cry, Bucky had turned to Sam and...winked. Not even just winked. He had actually swept a thorough look down and then slowly back up the length of Sam's body, and _then_ winked at him.

Sam's immediate reaction had been an indignant snort, but if anyone had pressed him he wouldn't have been able to say if that snort was directed at Bucky or himself. This was a man who had tried to kill him multiple times and ripped his wing out the last time they'd met. He should not have been trying to make Sam's stomach flutter. Sam's stomach should not have been fluttering.

That was about five weeks ago, and Bucky has not let up with the _looks_ since then.

"We should take the next exit and check into the motel there," Steve says, startling Sam out of his intense scrutiny of Bucky's pretending-to-be-asleep form in the rearview mirror.

Sam jumps, jerking the steering wheel almost imperceptibly. The average human wouldn't have noticed the subtle split-second swaying of the car before Sam righted it. Unfortunately for him, the only average human in this car is Sam.

Bucky's eyes snap open, and make contact with Sam's through the mirror. Sam hurriedly looks away.

"Are you okay?" Steve asks, earnest and concerned. 

"Hmm?" Sam resolutely keeps his eyes on the road, grips the wheel tighter.

"You've been driving for a long time. You must be tired," Steve elaborates. "Next exit, locally owned motel so far below the radar that they don't even have credit card service. Sharon says they might not even have running water, which I hope is just her idea of a funny joke. Let's crash there and get you some sleep."

"Sure, sounds good," Sam replies. He concentrates very, very hard on sounding completely normal. 

He possibly does a bad job at that, because the next look Steve shoots him is extra concerned. He doesn't know what look Bucky might possibly be giving him because he refuses to check.

Steve thinks Sam is being hypervigilant, and Sam lets him think that because it's not like he's wrong. Sam is jumpy, his skin too tight and his ears listening for dangers that aren't even there. Voluntarily re-entering a country where he's a wanted man, being pursued by not one but multiple deadly organizations with advanced weapons of mass destruction will do that to a guy. But Steve thinks Sam is _just_ being hypervigilant, rather than hypervigilant _and also_ toeing the edges of a mental breakdown over his sexual attraction to the Winter Soldier, and Sam isn't going to disabuse him of that notion.

At the motel, Sam checks in on his own, because seeing the three of them together is like begging to get recognized.

"You go ahead," Sam says, tossing Steve the keys to their room. "I'll get our bags. I just want to get some air for a bit." He leans on the trunk of the car they rented under a different name and takes in a few deep breaths to demonstrate.

Bucky follows Steve through the motel door, probably to go do some intensely thorough perimeter checks, and Sam's calm deep breathing changes into something more genuine.

Sam doesn't know how long he stands there letting his mind go blank. He opens the trunk and then he kind of goes vacant. Some unspecified amount of time passes and suddenly Bucky's voice is so close to him that it practically comes from inside his head.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Sam curses, nearly slamming the back of his skull into the lifted trunk door. "Warn a guy, will you?"

Bucky shows his teeth in what one might technically classify as a grin if it weren't so dangerous. "Sorry," he says, not sounding even a little bit sorry. "You were out here for so long I thought the bags might have eaten you. Need any help with them?"

Sam hauls their three duffels out of the trunk with one hand just to prove a point. 

Bucky gives him another one of those predatory not-grins and reaches up to close the trunk for him. The way he stretches makes the hem of his shirt ride up just enough to show a sliver of skin at his hip.

They're two steps from the door of their room when Bucky lays a hand on the small of Sam's back and says, "Seriously though, are you okay?"

"I'm great," Sam says, opening the door and shuffling inside as quickly as he can. "Just need a hot shower and some shut-eye." And a chance to forget all about the way his skin tingles where Bucky touched him through his shirt, he doesn't add out loud. 

Steve looks up at their entrance and immediately goes to grab two bags from Sam. He and Bucky exchange an inscrutable look over Sam's shoulder. He can feel it.

He calls dibs on the shower, which no one fights him for, and he forces himself to take it as quickly as possible to stop himself from giving into the temptation of wallowing under the spray of hot water. Or touching himself.

The thing about Steve is that he is genuinely, without guile or self-interest, such a good friend. And slowly, more and more with each passing day, Sam can see that Bucky probably is too. He feels awful about worrying them, but the alternative is worse.

He steps out of the shower and dries himself efficiently, pulling on an old t-shirt and a pair of boxers before going back into the room. "Well, I'm gonna turn in," he says to Steve, who's frowning at something on his phone, and to Bucky, who's cleaning his guns.

There's an extra cot in the two-person room, provided by the motel so they could charge them for a room that sleeps three. Sam wants to volunteer to take the cot since he's the smallest out of them and would probably be the least uncomfortable, but he has a feeling that would just start another round of silently concerned meaningful eye contact behind his back, so he falls face-first into the bed farthest from the door instead. He buries his face into a pillow that smells faintly of bleach, and closes his eyes. 

He falls asleep firmly telling himself that 1) they're on the run and trying to start anything would be spectacularly stupid timing, 2) Bucky was literally kept as a brainwashed killing machine for seventy years and wasn't allowed to have any thoughts or desires of his own, and he has every right to work through his trauma by exploring his new freedom without some creep drooling all over him, 3) it would therefore be perverted of Sam to fantasize about him in a remotely sexual way, 4) hence, because he does fantasize, he is a pervert who should, 5) control himself. 

But Sam is only a mortal man, with all the weaknesses of man. The next morning, over a late breakfast after putting some distance between themselves and their last known location, while Steve and Bucky laugh and tease each other over an ancient high school memory Bucky's mind has allowed him to unearth, Sam interjects by saying, "You were definitely hot as a high schooler."

Bucky pauses, fork halfway to his mouth, the remnants of laughter still lingering about his face. "Come again?"

Sam feels his face heat up. Steve looks very, perhaps _overly_ , interested in the answer.

"Oh, god, um, I just meant. Your yearbook photo was in our history textbook. I always thought you were very attractive in it." Please stop talking, Sam's brain begs Sam's mouth. He clicks his teeth shut. 

If he had to pick two words for it, Sam would describe Bucky's answering smile as 'downright predatory.' 

Sam is fucked.

Steve, who's normally so good about sparing Sam from embarrassment, doesn't seem to notice his discomfort at all and just says, "I agree, he really was a looker back in the day. Broke all the hearts before I even had the chance to ask anyone out. It's a real shame he's aged so badly."

"Hey, watch who you're calling ugly, punk," Bucky says back, keeping up with the patter, but his eyes stay on Sam. 

Sam takes an overly large gulp of his coffee and prays to a god he doesn't believe in that either it'll burn his tongue off or he'll choke on it and die.

Unfortunately for him, neither of those things happens. They finish breakfast and then they're back on the road. He tries like hell to make sure the subject doesn't get brought up again, which isn't actually that difficult because the next few days pass in a frenzied blur. Steve gets identified when they bring in their rental car to trade for a different one, and Sam and Bucky have to put on Oscar-worthy performances pretending they don't know him while he runs off. He manages to shake his tails and they meet up again in a small town several hundred miles over without further incident, and then narrowly avoid running into Hydra agents in that sleepy town thanks to a tip from Sharon that just barely reaches them in the nick of time.

Nothing bad has actually happened. It's just a series of close calls and near-misses, the potential for something awful without any follow through. They're back on the road without anything like violence at all, but it still leaves Sam keyed up on adrenaline and jittery. His brain won't stop turning over what could have happened if they had just been a little too early to rendezvous with Steve or a little too late to get Sharon's call, if Stark's people had somehow traced that one call on their burner phone before they ditched it or if the nice lady at the car rental place had recognized all three of them instead of just one. 

("Bucky is innocent," Steve had said to him back in Wakanda, before they rented their first car with a fake credit card. It had taken T'Challa less than a week to figure out how to deprogram the Winter Soldier, and even less time to come up with a working dupe of Bucky's metal arm. If Sam weren't already totally stupid for someone else, he could see himself blowing T'Challa. "There's evidence out there that can exonerate him. They kept records. Bucky is sure there are backups that'll prove what they did."

"Okay," Sam said. His duffle was already half packed, and he was hurriedly tossing toiletries into a bag. They could obviously just buy soap once they were on the road, but he figured the more they could avoid places with closed circuit cameras like drug store counters, the better.

"We have to find it before Hydra destroys it all. And we're technically persons of interest right now, so it's going to look suspicious as soon as we re-enter the States."

"Why are you telling me things I already know, Steve?"

Steve laid a hand on Sam's wrist, stopping his frantic rummaging through the medicine cabinet. "I owe you this explanation. I don't want you to ruin your life before you realize what you signed up for. You should know that Bucky's plan—"

"Actually," Sam interrupted, "it's better if I don't know all the details. I'll have less to lie about under oath if I get caught."

Steve swallowed, adam's apple bobbing while his lips thinned out into a hard line. "That's a good point," he had said, and he'd looked like someone was currently kicking his puppy or his stomach or something, so Sam took pity on him and said,

"Don't worry, we probably won't get caught," even though both of them knew that wasn't true. 

It took Sam no time at all to finish packing, and then that was it. He had made his decision and from that point on there was no going back.)

He's so far in his own head that he doesn't even notice Bucky has been stepping up his flirting, or whatever one might call whatever the hell he's doing. It must have been a gradual escalation; Sam is like the proverbial frog in a pot of water being heated up so slowly that he doesn’t jump out before it's boiling. Once he starts paying attention again, it's like Bucky is suddenly all over him. He's always standing or sitting closer than Sam expects, his breath ghosting over Sam's skin. His hands are solicitous, always at the ready to help Sam with a door, a bag, a map, a key, or if there's nothing to help with then they're on Sam, on his shoulder or his back or his hip.

It makes it harder and harder to remember why his inexplicable infatuation with Bucky is A Bad Idea. Sam mentally rehearses the reasons, which he has condensed into a few concise bullet points: bad timing, brainwashed prisoner of war, don't be selfish, don't be a pervert. He goes over them like a mantra, over and over until it's basically reduced to "bad selfish pervert," which is not a thing he loves telling himself but on the plus side it does help keep the inopportune boners at bay. 

Their supply of cash runs low and Steve is still on high alert after their recent close call, so he decides he should make a withdrawal from one of his myriad of anonymous accounts from a different town, just in case.

Sam and Bucky eat lunch in the restaurant attached to the hotel, in full view of numerous eyewitnesses and therefore establishing an alibi. 

They get a booth but Bucky slides in next to him instead of across from the table. His broad shoulders press right up against Sam's. 

"It's nice to finally have some time alone together," Bucky says, reaching to take a few fries off Sam's plate.

Sam pushes it closer to Bucky so he doesn't have to stick his whole arm directly into Sam's space. He keeps doing it anyway.

"Sure, yeah," Sam says. He tries not to noticeably squirm away from Bucky or, like, towards him. Bad selfish pervert, bad selfish pervert.

"Is there any particular reason your heart's beating twice as fast as normal?" Bucky asks, tone conversational but volume low, like he's whispering directly into Sam's ear.

"You can hear my heartbeat?" It's creepy, but it's also genuinely interesting, and possibly incriminating as well.

Done with his fries, Bucky shrugs lazily and drops his hand onto the napkin on Sam's lap. He wipes the salt off his fingers and then leaves his hand there above Sam's knee. "Do I make your nervous?"

"No. Yes. Not for the reasons you're thinking."

"What reasons do you think I'm thinking?"

"I know you're not going to kill me in my sleep or anything. Not anymore. Now that you're, you know, yourself. I just..."

Bucky hums at him to go on, squeezes his knee encouragingly.

"I just don't want to be a bad selfish pervert about this," Sam blurts out. It's more truth than he meant to drop. He can tell that Bucky is taken aback by it, even if his face is as stone cold imperturbable as always. One eyebrow subtly rises briefly.

"A bad selfish pervert about what?" 

"About wanting you," Sam confesses, because Bucky is so close and his voice is so low, his lips practically touching Sam's ear, his hand kneading his knee, and he barely even has to say it out loud. He can just whisper it, practically mouth it silently, and Bucky can hear him, can hear his heartbeat too apparently.

"Well that's dumb," Bucky says. "Because I've been wanting you too, and I haven't felt even a little bit bad about it."

"That's different. You're allowed. You've been—they kept you prisoner for so long, Bucky."

"Is that the problem?"

Sam doesn't want Bucky to get the impression that he means he thinks Bucky is damaged goods, so he changes tack. "No, I mean, there's also the fact that you're practically Steve's brother. Steve's my friend. He's probably my best friend. And you're his brother. Best friend's brother is off limits."

"Oh my god," Bucky says, like it physically hurts him to not be openly laughing at Sam. "We're not teenagers, Wilson. And if anybody's the forbidden little sister in this relationship, it would be Steve, so don't worry about it."

"I said brother," Sam protests weakly.

"Uh huh," Bucky says, leaning in even closer to Sam's face.

"Speak of the devil," Sam says, turning away. Through big bay window at the front of the restaurant, Steve can be seen approaching from the parking lot. 

Bucky backs away to a much more civilized distance. Steve flashes them a thumbs up through the window and that's their cue to pay the bill and check out of the hotel.

They don't get a chance to finish the conversation they started because Steve is constantly with them for the next couple of days. The air hangs weird and tense between them, so fraught with restlessness that Steve _has_ to have noticed. Surely a blind man would notice. Even a dead man would notice. But he says nothing, keeps acting like everything is normal, so Sam and Bucky do a bad job of acting like it too.

After a few nights on the road, taking shifts driving while the other two sleep, they finally settle in a campground that they're pretty sure no Hydra operatives and no Stark spy drones are likely to discover, or at least as sure as they can get.

"No offense or anything, but I need to get away from you guys for a minute or I'm going to go insane," Sam says, stretching his legs. He looks back at the car he just exited and cannot believe that he's spent a good nine-tenths of the past several days packed in that tin can with two other people. "I'm going for a run by myself. I'll stay close and keep this phone on," he says, grabbing one of their burners. "I'll check back in at 1900 hours or before."

Steve looks uneasy, but he says, "Sure thing. We'll get our sleeping bags set up here. Watch your back."

Bucky doesn't say anything, but he takes Sam's phone and does something to it before handing it back.

Sam takes off at an easy pace, following the paths through the woods and intending to keep his promise to stay close. He's in comfortable enough clothing but not quite running gear—it's really more to clear his head than it is for exercise. His feet aren't used to being on the ground so much, now that he's had a taste of the sky again. His wings are safely stashed in their trunk, but a guy flying around with a jetpack is the opposite of inconspicuous so he hasn't used them in a while; and unless world peace unexpectedly descends upon them, he can't even look forward to the next chance he'll get to break them out because it'll probably be some horrible life or death situation. 

He tries to shake these maudlin thoughts out of his head, reminding himself that the whole point of going for a run was to feel less antsy, not dwell on things. He forces himself to focus on the present moment and not worry about anything else. Nothing else exists but the pounding of his feet against the packed dirt trail, the calls of nightjars and other crepuscular critters in the trees, the feeling of the air cooling as the sun goes down. He gets into a rhythm and almost manages to forget everything when a dark form ambushes him.

His fried nerves scream out at him and he automatically drops into a defensive stance, striking out at about groin height to divert his attacker. A metal hand knocks his strike to the side and then Bucky's voice says, "It's me, it's just me."

"Jesus, Barnes, what part of 'I'm going on a run _by myself_ ' did you have trouble understanding?" Sam pants, his heart thudding out of his ribcage. "You need to stop jumping out at me or I'm going to knock your teeth out one day."

Bucky looks amused, which doesn't do much for Sam's ego or for his sense of personal safety as far as being able to defend himself from surprise Hydra assailants.

"Sorry," Bucky says, sounding like he's never sincerely apologized for anything before in his life, "I didn't mean to startle you. You were getting kind of far from the campsite, I wanted to check on you."

"You bugged my phone, didn't you?"

"I bugged your phone," Bucky agrees.

Sam sighs. This is the first time they've been alone together since their last big talk. He can't say he's totally surprised that Bucky waited until he was deep in the woods and far away from Steve to corner him. He looks around for a good place to sit down and finds a log that looks more or less dry and perches on the end not completely covered in fungus. "Alright big guy, lay it on me."

Bucky looks like he doesn't know whether to sit next to Sam or stand towering over him, and fidgets for a while before settling on standing next to him, looking out into the darkening woods in the same direction Sam is facing, vaguely non-confrontational but still hella tall. He's the one who hunted Sam down, but now he seems unsure of what to say first. He clears his throat. "I probably owe you an apology."

Sam blinks. Not exactly the opening he was expecting, but okay. "For all the times you tried to kill me, for when you fucked up my first set of wings, for waking me with your snoring most nights, or for nearly giving me a heart attack just now?"

"None of those," Bucky says, elbowing the side of Sam's head lightly. Sam head butts him back. "I know you had a job and a house back in DC. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for Steve, and Steve wouldn't be here if it weren't for me."

"I mean, I don't know. Even if it weren't for you, there'd still be this whole unlawful imprisonment thing, and the unconstitutional governmental oversight of every citizen who's ever put on a fancy costume and picked a funny nickname. I might still be running around out here involving myself. My momma always said I don't have a lick of common sense."

Bucky snorts.

"But that's not what you wanted to get me alone to talk about, is it?"

They're silent for long enough that the birds start calling again. Eventually, Bucky works up the nerve to say, "We've established that you're into me. And I'm into you. So I don't understand why we're still dancing around each other."

Oh boy. And here Sam thought Bucky would beat around the bush some more.

"If my whole past is too complicated to deal with, you should just tell me and I'll back off. I get it. You don't have to try to let me down easy. But if it makes a difference you should know that they didn't rape me. They threatened it sometimes, but they never actually did it—not that I can remember anyway, I guess I could still be missing some memories, but I'm saying I don't have any mental trauma about sex specifically, so if that's what's been holding you back...I mean. Don't hold back on my account."

Sam puts his hands over his face and thinks very seriously about wailing into the night. With his luck, Steve's supersoldier enhanced hearing would pick it up and the only way this conversation could get more awkward would be if Steve joined in. He feels Bucky's hand come to rest on the back of his neck. His hand is so large that it feels like his palm spans his entire nape.

"Are you mad? Did I say something wrong?"

"No, I'm not _mad_." Sam laughs helplessly. "At least not at you. I just—I hadn't thought about it, and now I might be kind of mad at myself for not thinking they could've done that to you. I've been holding back because I don't want to take advantage of you. You were a prisoner for so long, there's a whole wide world out there for you to explore, the first available guy you see shouldn't get to call dibs on you. Especially when it didn't even occur to that guy to ask if Hydra, you know, assaulted you." 

Bucky's hand on his neck tightens minutely. Sam does not stop covering his face. "Come on, are you serious right now? You're seriously feeling guilty over your failure to imagine all the things that didn't happen to me."

"That _could've_ happened to you!"

"No wonder you and Steve are friends. You're ridiculous." With that, Bucky pulls Sam's head up and tips it back so that he's looking straight up, throat bared into the night air. Bucky leans down and kisses him.

His long dark hair falls over their faces like a curtain. Sam has kissed his fair share of people, but he can't remember if he's ever done it at this angle before, although it's difficult to remember anything at all right now. It's strange, in a novel rather than a bad way, and Bucky's plush mouth is softer than he expected. He isn't rough, which is another thing Sam for some reason expected, but he takes control with an assured ease, like he's trying to convince Sam that this is exactly what he wants. Sam makes a ragged, desperate sound low in his chest, and when they pull away to catch their breaths, Sam takes the opportunity to stand up so he can be face-to-face with Bucky. He pushes him up against the nearest tree, and Bucky's muscles bunch under Sam's hands, a reminder that he's merely allowing Sam to move him around. 

They make out against the tree until Sam begins to feel lightheaded, and would have kept going if Sam's phone didn't start buzzing in his pocket.

Bucky starts to make a "is that your phone or are you just happy to see me" joke and Sam claps his hand over his mouth, stopping him.

"I set a ten minute warning alarm so I can get back to the campground on time—" Sam yanks his hand away when Bucky licks his palm, making a face. He wipes it on Bucky's hoodie. "You're disgusting. We gotta start heading back before Steve throws a fit."

They jog back and make it there well before Steve starts to worry, and he smiles at both of them, guileless and pure as apple pie. Sam automatically starts to feel guilty, despite the fact that according to Bucky they're both grown men capable of consent.

"How was your run?" Steve asks.

Bucky says nothing, poker-faced, so Sam follows his lead and says, "It was fine. Good. Glad I got some time away from you guys, no offense. I feel a lot less like I'm going to fidget out of my skin now."

"For the record, I was glad you finally gave me some time on my own too," Steve says. "I was sick and tired of seeing your face every time I turned."

"Yeah right," Sam scoffs. "You missed me so much, it's actually kind of sad because I was only gone for like half an hour. How embarrassing for you."

Steve laughs, and they continue to rib each other as they turn in for the night, with even Bucky occasionally chiming in. 

It's been a while since Sam has slept on the ground outside, and even with the high quality sleeping bags they have, Sam's bones let him know that he's older than he used to be. Luckily, they only have to do it for one night. 

Steve gets a long message from Sharon that makes Bucky and Sam share a knowing look and then proceed to tease Steve mercilessly. Steve flips them the bird, one finger each, and says, "Would you be serious for two seconds, this is actually important intel."

"Is 'important intel' twenty-first century slang for dirty talk?" Bucky asks in a perfect deadpan.

Steve casts him an exasperated glare and looks to Sam for help.

"Come on Barnes, didn't you hear the man? It's serious business. Go on, Steve, tell us what Sharon sexted you."

Steve groans and tells them to pack their bags, refusing to relay the message as punishment for their mockery. He takes the wheel and starts driving without telling them where they're headed, and it takes two solid hours of non-stop badgering before he finally gives in and lets them know that the lead they've been following has run dry and they need to interrupt their steady west-ward progression to divert north. True to their previous agreement, Steve keeps some of the details from Sam, only telling him enough so that he knows they're going to stay in a hotel on the outskirts of Coldwater, Michigan. He assumes that Steve fills Bucky in on the rest while they go on a secret reconnaissance mission and leave Sam to scope out the hotel.

He runs a background check on everyone on the staff of the three-star inn with the limited technology that T'Challa was able to sneak them before they had to drop off the radar. He scans the air for drones, sweeps their rooms for bugs, and manually clears all of their possible exit routes. It takes him a while to be so thorough, but whatever Steve and Bucky are out doing takes even longer, and so Sam retires to his single room to take a long overdue shower.

He's just washing the suds off his skin, clean for the first time in days, when he hears a door opening. He leaves the shower running but steps out soundlessly, reaching for the gun he left out on the counter just in case.

"Stand down, soldier," Bucky calls out.

Sam relaxes and nudges open the bathroom door with his foot. "How'd you know I was about to shoot your face off?"

"You aren't stupid." Bucky pushes his way in and closes the door again behind his back.

It's suddenly a very, very small room. And Sam is very, very wet and naked. "Where's Steve?" he asks, throat dry.

"Sent him off to get food and report everything we learned to the Carter girl. He'll be gone for at least another hour."

Sam swallows. Bucky's arms come up to bracket Sam, one on either side of the counter, penning him in. He smells faintly of some kind of accelerant, like diesel or something. 

"I should, um," Sam says, uncocking his pistol and then leaning over to put it far out of reach.

"Good thinking."

Sam looks up and can't remember feeling this small in a very long time. Bucky's presence is a solid bulk surrounding him, his face as inscrutably blank as always, and yet none of it sets off any of the danger signals in Sam's brain. He feels vulnerable but not threatened, like he's holding himself open and inviting someone in.

"Can I kiss you?" Bucky asks, and it's such a simple request that Sam breaks his own heart a little by thinking about how long he wasn't allowed to ask for anything, until now. He nods silently, and Bucky pushes forward, crowding him into the faux granite counter and pressing their lips together.

Like the last time they kissed, Bucky goes for exactly what he wants, firm and unself-conscious. He lets Sam's tongue into his mouth but when he decides he's had enough, he gives it a gentle nip. Sam can't help moaning at that, his dick twitching to attention. Bucky presses his knee between Sam's thighs, and the rough denim against his damp skin feels like a million small pricks of electricity. 

Bucky keeps rocking into Sam's hardening cock while he kisses him, until Sam is practically riding his leg like some horny teenager. He pulls away with a ragged gasp and says, "Stop, I don’t want to come on your jeans."

Bucky stops, but only steps back enough to put maybe a hairsbreadth between them. 

"Are we doing this?" Sam asks.

"Do you want to?"

"Yeah, shit, yeah, just let me—" Sam wriggles within Bucky's grasp, getting enough room to reach into his shaving bag to find the little tube of KY jelly he keeps in there. He has no condoms but thanks to an embarrassing conversation with Steve (well, embarrassing for Steve, delightful for Sam) he knows that supersoldiers can't carry STIs. He turns around to face the counter, bending over.

"Do you wanna do the honours or should I?" Sam asks over his shoulder, holding up the lube.

"You do it, I'll watch," Bucky says, and it sounds so hot that Sam's hips involuntarily thrust forward.

He quickly smears some lube onto the fingers of his right hand and reaches behind himself, applying it all around his hole first before dipping one finger in, then two. He can't get them too deep from this angle, but he makes up for that by using a lot of lube, really making sure everything is nice and slippery. 

Sam sneaks a look at Bucky and sees him watching intently, like he's memorizing what Sam's fingers are doing. He's still fully dressed, visible erection tenting the zipper of his jeans. It sends a shiver of anticipation down Sam's spine. If he felt deliciously vulnerable before, it's heightened tenfold—he's completely naked, splayed wide before Bucky, while Bucky could walk straight outside right now and still look perfectly normal, obvious hard-on notwithstanding. He has a flashback to a butterfly exhibit he saw once at the Smithsonian. That's what he feels like right now: his wings held open by pins for the pleasure of his onlooker. 

"Okay, I'm ready," he tells Bucky, and god, when did his voice get so raspy?

Bucky unbuttons his fly and pulls his pants down along with his underwear, just enough for his cock to spring free. He takes the lube from Sam and squeezes a generous amount onto his length. Sam makes a mental note to buy a bigger tube from now on. He reaches back to help Bucky spread it around, squeezing, running his thumb up the thick vein on the underside of his cock. Bucky groans, jerking forward, his cock jutting into the cleft of Sam's ass. He squeezes more lube onto himself and for a while they go at it like that, Bucky's cock sliding up and down Sam's crack, and Sam thinks he could probably come like this, eventually, with Bucky nudging the sensitive skin behind his balls on every stroke, if this is all Bucky wants to do.

Apparently it isn't what Bucky's thinking, because after a few more thrusts he pulls back and takes hold of his dick with his hand, feeding it into Sam's hole. There's so much lube that it slides right in, no friction but plenty of pressure. Sam breathes in and out deeply, unclenching all of his muscles. It's been a while since he's done this but he still remembers how to bear down, how to accept the intrusion and just feel.

Bucky is making the most incredible sounds, deep and low and gruff, and his hands grip Sam's hips just this side of too hard. He doesn't try to push all the way in right away, stops about halfway to let Sam adjust before pulling out, opening him up with a series of shallow thrusts.

Sam uses one hand to brace himself so he doesn't smash face first into the slightly chipped off-white sink, and with the other hand he pulls at his own cock, trying to keep time with Bucky. He tells him when he's ready for more, for Bucky to go a little harder, and Bucky gives it to him in earnest.

Sam's trying not to make too much noise because Steve could theoretically walk in at any moment, but that thought just makes him even harder, and he bites down on his forearm in an attempt to muffle himself. Bucky's length drives in and out of him relentlessly, and his wet hand scrabbles on the counter, slips, he almost face-plants and then Bucky's left arm is there around his chest, holding him up. Bucky uses it to pull him back onto his cock, and Sam can't help it anymore, he's coming and he can't do it quietly, cries out as he spills all over his stomach.

Bucky isn't done yet, fucking Sam through his aftershocks, riding him out. Sam is over-sensitized, he can feel Bucky all over, like Bucky isn't just inside his ass but inside all of him, everywhere. His skin feels like it's buzzing and his softening penis bounces against his thigh with Bucky's movements. Every time Bucky's cock brushes against his prostate, it feels like a wash of static comes over him, tingles from his head to his toes. He moans helplessly. 

He knows Bucky is getting close when his breathing gets quicker and quicker, the panting in his ear building to a crescendo that finally ends with three quick, jerky thrusts, burying himself to the hilt and then pulsating, pumping his seed into Sam. 

They sort of just hold onto each other and breathe as their singing nerves come back down to the earth. The bathroom mirror has fogged up so completely that Sam can't see their reflections.

Bucky pulls out, and Sam gingerly straightens up. His back complains loudly in the form of creaks and cracks, and he grimaces, rolling his shoulders back and swinging his arms to get feeling back into them. There are bruises on his hips and across the front of Sam's chest, where Bucky's metal fingertips dug into his skin. 

"Did I hurt you?" Bucky asks quietly.

"I kind of ache all over," Sam says truthfully, "but I already did before all of...that. It's more the spending all day cramped in a car and sleeping outside and constantly running for my life, not the great sex. Which, I have to emphasize, was great."

Bucky looks relieved, or about as relieved as his face is capable of looking. "I haven't fucked anybody since they juiced up my body. I didn't know if it would be too much. I tried to practice so I wouldn't hurt you."

"...Practice?"

"On a grapefruit," Bucky clarifies. "I wanted to make sure my dick wouldn't punch through your insides."

Sam almost ruptures something trying not to laugh at the absurdity of Bucky boning a grapefruit, then gives up and laughs a lot. 

"Oh shut the fuck up," Bucky says. "I was trying to be considerate."

"No, I appreciate it, trust me, I do," Sam says, wiping tears from his eyes, "I just. A grapefruit. A grapefruit!"

"Speaking of things we appreciate," Bucky growls, and Sam tries to get his mirth under control because it sounds like Bucky is going to articulate his desires for the second time this hour, and he really should be more supportive, "Can we not tell Steve about this? Just for now?"

It's not exactly the most romantic you could say to someone after you've just fucked their brains out, but Sam feels strongly that everything they do should be on Bucky's terms. He's the one who hasn't been allowed to choose anything for the past few decades. He gets to call the shots. "Sure, yeah, no problem," he says, trying to keep his voice light.

"Not because I'm embarrassed or anything," Bucky rushes to reassure him. "Just because I know Steve, and he's going to hear wedding bells as soon as he finds out, and we should figure out what we want and where we're going with this before he gets his hopes up too high, you know?"

"Yeah, no, that makes sense," Sam says. He remembers the list of reasons he made about why this is a bad idea. He's still naked, and Bucky is still practically fully dressed. He wishes he could put his pants on or at least wrap a towel around himself, but there's warm jizz dripping down the back of his leg and he needs another shower.

"Thanks for understanding," Bucky says, and then he kisses Sam again and Sam knows he's in trouble for real because he reflexively melts into it, like his body already thinks Bucky is his to keep.

Bucky strips his jacket off, his hoodie and his shirt, toes off his shoes and socks and lets his pants drop all the way to pool on the floor. He helps Sam step over the edge of the bathtub when his legs are too sore and he holds Sam up through his whole shower. He even helps him scrub his back.

They're dressed and in their separate rooms long before Steve returns.


	2. Chapter 2

Once the dam has been broken, there's no holding back the flood—if by 'flood' you mean all the fucking they now have to hide from Steve.

Sam can't even say he's surprised. It's part of the reason he tried to hold out for so long. He didn't want to be a bad selfish pervert, and also he knew that he wouldn't have been able to just let Bucky hit it and quit it, to get it out of their systems. Whatever the thing that smoldered between them was, Sam knew it was addictive. He saw enough addicts back at the VA to know that you can't kick a habit unless you really want to, and he can't make himself want to.

It doesn't help that Bucky seems to have the stamina of the Energizer bunny and is always ready to go at the drop of a hat. They give each other quick, furtive blowjobs in gas station restrooms, the thrill and pleasure of it overriding some truly traumatizing levels of filth. They make out when Steve goes down the hall to get ice or ask the front desk for more towels. They rut against each other like horny teenagers, dry humping through their clothes when Steve has to duck out for a phone call, springing back apart to opposite sides of the room with their jeans overly tight and sticky when he returns sooner than expected. The throbbing twinge in Sam's groin is almost worth it for 1) how he can still taste Bucky in his mouth from when he licked into it as he straddled Sam's lap and ground down again and again and 2) being able to shift their attentions to making fun of how red and flustered Steve is from just a five minute phone conversation with Sharon.

"I'm not 'red' or 'flustered' from talking to Sharon!" he exclaims with liberal use of finger quotes. "I'm _angry_ because you guys keep implying that our totally professional exchange of newly updated information involved phone sex!"

Sam can't help laughing out loud, a full knee-slapping guffaw, and when he makes eye contact with Bucky he can see that even Bucky's normally impassive face looks amused. Sam runs his tongue over his lips. God, they're hypocrites.

When Steve parks the car (their fifth rental in as many days, and Sam idly wonders if there's a world record for number of cars rented in a set length of time, but of course they wouldn't be able to submit their names for it even if there was) on the shoulder of the highway because he's busting for a piss, Bucky slides into the back seat next to Sam and presses Sam's hand to the bulge of his crotch.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Sam hisses, keeping one eye out the window where Steve has disappeared into the bushes to do his business. "He'll be back in a minute, what exactly do you think we're gonna do?"

"I don't know, a really fast hand job?" Bucky shrugs.

Fuck my life, Sam thinks, as he undoes Bucky's button and licks his palm. He is in so deep and no good will come of any of this.

"You're the one who doesn’t want him to know," Sam reminds him darkly as he jerks him a few times quickly, the velvet heat of Bucky's skin sliding over his hand like a promise. He stuffs him back into his pants and shushes him when he tries to protest, tipping his head in the direction Steve is starting to return from. 

Bucky grumbles and bundles up his hoodie over his lap.

Not thirty seconds later, Steve opens the car door and gets back into the driver's seat. He peers quizzically at Bucky and says, "Why are you sitting in the back now?" 

"Sam got scared of being all alone back here and asked me to sit next to him," he answers.

"Oh my god, fuck off," Sam says.

Steve looks back and forth at each of them, creases furrowing between his brows. "So are either of you going to sit up front with me?"

"No."

"Alright then," he says, holding up both hands like he doesn't want to know. "I'm going to start the car now, and you kids better not start fighting back there."

Sam rolls his eyes and says, "We'll be good, dad."

Bucky looks resolutely out of the window on his side, and Sam can see in the reflection the hard line of his lips pressed grimly against each other. He takes a sadistic pleasure in knowing that every bump on the road is jostling Bucky's raging hard-on and causing him borderline pain. It's his own damn fault.

They keep driving for god knows how long. Sam has a vague idea that they're in the Upper Peninsula, but all the signs they pass say names he isn't familiar with and he's resolutely avoiding looking at the GPS just in case he ends up being interrogated in yet another underwater prison. Steve and Bucky tell him there's an old Hydra base hidden in an abandoned mining town around here, a base that Bucky suspects might have some ancient computers that haven't been carpet-bombed yet. Bucky's also about 90% sure they won't be guarded, but that means a 10% chance they will, so they have to go in hot, armed to the teeth. 

The old familiar sense of coiled fight-or-flight tension settles back into Sam's body. It had faded away somewhat these past couple of weeks, distracted as he had been by the constant presence of Bucky's body, his scent, his warm breath. It's returning now, as he checks and rechecks his ammunition, makes sure that his Ka-Bar pulls cleanly out of its sheath in one smooth motion at any angle he might need to get at it from.

They peel off from the highway and turn east at a rustic sign nailed to a weather-beaten wooden post. It says "MANDAN," which means nothing to Sam.

It's a true ghost town, not a touristy one maintained for photo opportunities. Trees and other plants are growing in and over the piles of rotting boards and crumbling bricks that used to be buildings. Sam can see three lone houses still standing, looking more or less intact on the outside, but he imagines they're gutted on the inside and overrun with raccoon nests. Steve parks the car under an apple tree, its blossoms long gone but fruit still small and green. 

"There were two copper mines that used to feed this town," Bucky says, no trace of emotion in his voice. "Both of them were shut down a long time ago. Hydra hid their base deep in the bigger one, turned it into an underground bunker. I don't think they ever knew that I remembered it."

Sam catches Steve's eye in the rearview mirror. Neither one of them tries to say anything reassuring or pitying to Bucky. 

They exit the vehicle and Sam's instincts immediately scream that something isn't right. He feels like they're being watched, but before he can place where the feeling is coming from, the ringing sound of gunshots pounds in his ears, and he's reacting on pure reflex long drilled into him through repetition. 

He drops, ducking behind the car. He gets visual confirmation that his squadron hasn't sustained injuries—Bucky is also behind the car, and Steve is at Sam's eleven o'clock, using the thick trunk of an old tree for his cover. All three of them are armed, but whoever is firing at them has heavier artillery, shotgun slugs ripping through the car. It's going to be as useful as scrap metal soon, and he and Bucky are pinned with nowhere else to go. Bucky could conceivably use his arm to deflect some of the shots, but Sam has a handgun and a knife and a wing pack locked in the trunk of the car that's being rapidly turned into swiss cheese. Sam's got no way out.

He knows the same thoughts and calculations have been going through Steve's and Bucky's minds, because they're all soldiers. "I'm going to spread them out," Steve says, and he steps out from behind the tree like he forgot he isn't actually bulletproof without his shield. Sam would yell at him if only he had any other ideas.

It doesn't matter anyways, because it works. Steve draws fire to himself and gives Sam and Bucky a chance to get away from the car, get themselves behind a half-collapsed stone wall that used to be a part of somebody's home. 

Now that they're farther apart, it becomes easier to locate the enemy shooters. By Sam's count, there are four of them—three now that Bucky is returning fire and nails one clean through the throat, in the only vulnerable part, where his or her bulletproof vest meets his or her full cover tac helmet.

There are three of them, and Sam can make the two following Steve, who's leading them on a wild goose chase into the ghost town, which leaves one for him and Bucky. 

These people are well trained, well equipped, but they don't look like Hydra. They've got to be with some other government agency. The fact that they were waiting here for them means they've been made—someone knew enough to be able to guess where they were going, and now their only chance of evading capture is to make sure there's no one left alive to report back.

If Sam has to be honest with himself, he's not feeling great about it. It's morally defensible to shoot back when being shot at, but at the end of the day these people aren't evil alien cyborgs or anything easily justifiable like that. They're normal humans with decent motivations, even if Sam doesn't agree with them, and not that long ago they could've been Sam's colleagues. And if Sam's struggling with it, then he can imagine Cap is definitely having a small emotional crisis over it too.

He blames it on getting lost in these thoughts, how one of the agents manages to circle around and get the drop on him. The only reason he doesn't get his head blown off is because Bucky's arm shoots out from nowhere and yanks him down into the grass, bullets whizzing just barely over their heads. His impact against the ground knocks the wind out of him for a moment, but Bucky doesn't miss a beat and he's fully ready to return fire. He only pauses because the agent who had been shooting at them lowers their weapon and pulls of their tac helmet.

It's Maria Hill.

"Fucking hell, Wilson. I heard you were running around with these idiots, but I thought maybe it was just gossip."

Bucky snarls and cocks his gun.

Sam jumps up in front of him, his center mass blocking Bucky's shot. "Wait, don't, I know her."

"Get out of the way," Bucky says in what Sam recognizes is a warning tone.

"No," Sam says, holding his position. Bucky's metal hand is clamped around his wrist, gripping so hard that it hurts. He can feel the tension thrumming through it and into himself, like they're a closed circuit. 

"Why don't you boys come with me nice and easy," Maria says, weapon still lowered.

"The second I move, my friend here is going to put a bullet through your brain, so think real hard about whether you actually want me to do that."

Bucky growls again, trying to pull Sam out of the way, but Sam digs his heels in and stands his ground. If Bucky really wanted to, he could toss Sam straight over his shoulder, but possibly not without losing precious seconds and Maria isn't unarmed. 

They're at an impasse, Steve is off god knows where probably eliminating Hill's colleagues, and maybe the smarter move would be to just let Bucky finish her off, but Sam hasn't historically been very good at picking the smarter option over the more honorable one. 

"What the hell, Hill?" he says to her, casual like they're just shooting the shit at the water cooler at work. "We saved the world together and we cleared out that Hydra roach infestation together, don't you feel even a tiny sense of loyalty? I thought we were brothers in arms, yo."

Maria rolls her eyes. "I'm loyal to whoever signs my checks, and right now that's Stark and Ross. I'm a working woman, Wilson. This is strictly professional, no hard feelings."

"Sam, get the fuck out of my way." Bucky, in the same warning tone.

Sam just sticks himself even more in the way, his back pressing into the muzzle of Bucky's gun. He needs time to point out a not insignificant fact about Maria Hill. "You and I both know that's bullshit, come on. You can pretend you don't care all you want, but at the end of the day you're still loyal to Steve. You're going to let us go because you believe we're doing the right thing here, so let's just skip all this dancing around so you can go back and report to whoever the fuck that you were defeated in an altercation with us somewhere far, far away from here? Say West Virginia. I'll probably never go there." 

Maria's looking at him with that face that says she wants to smile but refuses to. Bucky's grinding his teeth so much that Sam can practically hear it. They're on the edge of someone giving in when Steve comes crashing through some undergrowth, startling all of them. If Bucky didn't have superhuman control of his fine motor skills, Sam would be dead right now.

Steve's covered in blood but he doesn't look injured. He and Maria have some awfully complicated emotions flitting across their faces right now. Bucky's gun is still digging into Sam's back.

"Why don't we give you some privacy so you can talk things out?" Sam suggests faux brightly. 

Bucky doesn't like the idea of leaving Steve alone without cover but there's no one left except Maria, and Sam knows for a fact that she's not going to be able to take him in now that she's face to face with him. He mouths 'I'll go calm him down' at Steve and Steve looks grateful for it, which confirms Sam's read of the situation. 

He leads Bucky away, and he goes reluctantly but without resistance. Once they're out of sight of Steve and Maria, he shifts so that he's the one leading Sam instead.

He drags Sam over the loose silt covering the back roads that haven't been maintained in years, just this side of too fast so that Sam stumbles slightly over his own feet, kicking up dust and gravel. Bucky pulls him to one of the houses still standing, paint peeling but structurally sound. People probably still camp out in it on occasion, in the height of summer, as a nice romantic getaway off the beaten path. Bucky's hand is on his shoulder at the junction of his neck, and he shoves Sam in through the door before kicking it shut behind himself so hard that the old frame shudders.

"Careful," Sam says, "or this house is gonna collapse on us—" 

Bucky cuts him off by shoving him into a wall and holding him up against it so that his toes just skim the ground. "Don't ever do that again," he growls, before swallowing Sam's mouth in a kiss.

Sam bites at Bucky's lips and tries to push him away, but he's a wall of muscle more solid than the actual wall behind him. "Don't do what, save us from certain arrest? Stop you from shooting a friend of Steve's?"

Bucky slams his flesh hand into the wall next to Sam's head and Sam is suddenly reminded of why he used to be so afraid of the Winter Soldier. "Don't. Ever. Use your own body as a shield. Ever again."

"Or what?" Sam challenges, jutting his chin out. He might be literally backed into a corner but he doesn't like anybody taking that tone with him, not even Bucky.

Bucky narrows his eyes. Sam readies himself for a fight. 

"Or I'm going to have a heart attack," Bucky says sincerely.

Okay. Not the fight he was expecting.

"It's bad enough that Steve does this shit, you don't even have your wings or any body armor at all right now, if you get yourself shot..."

"Hey," Sam murmurs, putting his hands on either side of Bucky's head, cradling it, pulling him even closer. "I only did it because I knew you were in perfect control, okay? I'm not going to make a habit of it."

"I'm not in control," he replies, breath ghosting across Sam's face. "I never am when I'm around you."

"We're in the same boat, then," Sam says, pressing forward until their lips meet in a whisper of a kiss.

Bucky undoes Sam's trousers, drops them to his ankles. He picks Sam up, hoisting him with his arms around his waist. Sam is not a small man but Bucky's metal arm is so strong that Bucky can keep him up one-handed, propped with his upper back against the wall and his feet clear off the ground when he wraps his legs around Bucky. With his other hand, Bucky undoes the fly of his own pants and pulls his cock free. 

It takes a lot of spit. Sam's too stunned and breathless by how fast things are moving to tense up, so when the head of Bucky's cock bumps the crease between his thigh and his ass cheek and then slides into his hole, it slips inside with hardly any pain. 

It doesn't hurt but the angle and the lack of lube makes Bucky feel enormous, makes him feel like too much. Sam arches away, into the unrelenting wall behind him. There's dust everywhere and the smell of rotting wood invades his nostrils. There isn't any furniture left in the house, the bare once-polished floorboards have been worn to the texture of fine grit sandpaper, and there's a single empty picture frame still hanging by a rusty nail on the wall across from him. Sam arches away, and he takes in all the details of this crumbling home where some family used to say grace around a table before supper, and he feels Bucky's cock throb inside him.

He braces his hands on Bucky's shoulders to hold him back, or to hold himself up so he can adjust, but gravity inexorably shoves him slowly, slowly down the length, taking full minutes to bury it inch by inch within him. He can feel himself trembling around Bucky as he stretches to accommodate him. 

Bucky puts both hands back onto Sam, changing his grip so he isn't carrying Sam with one arm anymore but holding his ass in his hands. His palms feel just as massive as his dick. Everything from this position feels too big. Those palms against the back of Sam's thighs keep him spread wide open for Bucky's cock.

"I know it's stupid to ask you for a promise you can't keep," Bucky says. His voice is calm and level, somehow, like he isn't splitting Sam in two with his dick in his ass. Like his breath isn't being taken away by the feeling of Sam quivering around him and the way Sam knows it is. "Not even stupid—it's unfair. But I want to ask anyway. I want to ask you stay safe, to never get in a bullet's way. What does that mean, if I know I shouldn't but I want to ask you anyway?"

He lifts Sam up easily, his biceps barely even straining, and drops him back onto his cock. Sam's legs convulse helplessly, his hips bucking. He's too completely fucked open to be able to muster up a whimper, much less an answer to Bucky's too-raw question.

His hands claw into Bucky's shoulder blades, scrabbling for purchase in the granite ropes of muscle there. He's only half hard, cock neglected between the two of them. Bucky catches his eye and they gaze at each other for a moment before Bucky swallows and asks, "Is this okay?"

Sam laughs shakily. "You're asking me that _now_?"

"I want to make sure I'm not hurting you," he says, adjusting his grip on Sam's ass. His metal fingers flex and relax against Sam's skin.

"Don't worry, you won't. You practiced on a grapefruit, remember?"

Annoyed, Bucky says through gritted teeth, "I. Was. Trying. To. Be. Considerate." and punctuates each word with a sharp thrust upwards. 

Sam groans, unable to stand not having a hand on his cock anymore, and wraps an arm around the back of Bucky's neck so he can cling onto him with the crook of his elbow. One hand now free, he strips furiously at his own cock. The new position brings them cheek-to-cheek with each other's faces, and every time Sam inhales on a wet gasp he does it directly into the shell of Bucky's ear.

"You can't come on my clothes," Bucky says, sounding entirely too casual like he isn't bouncing Sam up and down his dick.

"Man, shut up," Sam grinds out, locking his legs tighter around Bucky so he can roll himself up sinuously, back curving like a snake. "Telling me not to come right now is a really good way to bring me right to the edge, all over your clothes."

Bucky lifts his right hand away again, balancing Sam on just the one metal hand on the curve of his ass, and wraps it around the base of Sam's cock and balls, squeezing sharply. "Don't," he commands. 

Sam groans.

"We have to go back out to meet Steve after. I can't be covered in jizz."

"Jesus Christ almighty," Sam swears. He had almost forgotten. But in his defence, Bucky's gigantic dick is quite a distraction, as are the words 'covered in jizz' uttered in his gravelly voice. "Okay, okay, how should we do this then?"

"It might be better if we finish ourselves off."

Climbing off Bucky is painful, both in the sense of how sore and over-stretched every part of him feels and also in the sense of blue balls. Sam lows like a wounded heifer throughout the whole process to make his displeasure clear. Bucky rolls his eyes but doesn't say anything, accepting it as fair punishment for giving Sam such a thorough pounding and then not seeing it through all the way to the end.

They both have leftover fast food napkins stashed in their pockets, which about sums up the sad state of their fugitive lives. They hunch next to each other, jacking themselves off and coming in staccato spurts into crumpled tissues like teenagers, muffling their cries into each other's mouths. For lack of anything else to do, they just throw the tissues onto the floor and hope the old house will collapse before anyone finds them as a nasty surprise.

It's hard to walk without a slight limp. Sam mentally rehearses an explanation about pulling a muscle during the firefight in case Steve notices. 

Steve is half sitting, half leaning on their destroyed rental car, his face looking like it's caught in a life or death struggle between being disappointed in himself and being disappointed in everyone else.

"Where's Hill?" Sam asks.

Steve somehow manages to both slump further and also straighten at the same time, like it's one of his superpowers. "She left to buy us time with the DoD, said something about West Virginia?" He pauses to quirk an eyebrow at Sam. "She would've traded vehicles with us, but hers probably has ten different trackers on it in places only Tony would even begin to think about, so we're stuck with this."

Sam eyes the large holes riddling the car from bumper to bumper. He can see clear through to the other side in some spots. None of the windows are intact. "I don't think that thing is safe for the road. I don't think that thing is safe for life."

"I know." Steve hops off the hood of the car. He circles around to what's left of the trunk and pulls out everything that hasn't been decimated, namely their bulletproof gear and Sam's wing pack. By some miracle one duffle bag survived as well, with only one bullet hole through one of the straps and none through the body of the bag itself. Steve swings the bag onto one shoulder immediately, hands Bucky half of the gear, and leaves Sam nothing but his wings.

"I can carry more stuff," Sam says testily.

"There isn't any more stuff," Steve replies blithely.

Sam narrows his eyes at both him and Bucky, who hands him one single water bottle and says, "Here, you can help me carry this." 

Sam makes a face at both of them and starts walking towards the road they drove in on. 

Calumet Township is eight hours' walk away, not counting stoppage time for bathroom breaks. It's already late afternoon when they set out, and Sam knows for sure they won't be making it there before sundown. Maybe Steve and Bucky would've been able to, running at full speed without him, but he gets a glare from each of them when he suggests it about three hours into their walk, and then gets even stronger glares when he says he could use his wings to keep up.

"Listen, Sam, we just can't risk it. If Maria found us then that means other agents can, and flying is way too flashy. I know it's hard for you to be grounded all the time—"

"Man, don't start with that—"

"Start with what!"

"The sad coddling thing—"

"I'm not _coddling_ you, I'm just expressing my empathy about a difficult situation—"

"Gentlemen, please," Bucky interrupts, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Let's not bicker like children."

"Oh, you have some nerve," Steve snaps. "Like you and Sam aren't going at each other from morning til night."

Sam coughs.

Bucky smirks and looks like he's enjoying the tension entirely too much. 

"Okay," Sam says, stopping to sit down on the ground. "Clearly we are all tired and cranky. Let's take a moment to breathe and regroup and cool off."

"That's a great idea, Sam," Steve says, looking straight at Bucky as he says it to prove that he and Sam were not in fact bickering. 

They sit and drink some water. Steve takes out a map to make sure they haven't wandered off track. Sam breaks their only surviving protein bar into equal thirds, knowing that if he let either of these two idiots do it they would try to make his portion bigger, even though they have much faster metabolisms than him.

The sun hovers ominously over the horizon and night threatens to set in. They have to decide whether they want to keep walking in the dark, or sleep in a field for a night. On one hand, they have only one tactical flashlight between all three of them and falling into a pothole in the pitch darkness is a serious danger. Plus, Sam's energy is draining more and more with each passing second and he isn't sure how much further he can walk without sleep. On the other hand, they have zero sleeping bags between them and sleeping exposed to the elements is neither appealing nor smart. Besides, Sam isn't sure if he can even fall asleep on the cold damp ground, so it isn't like he'd be getting any more rest anyway.

After weighing all the pros and cons, they come to a consensus: they'll keep walking, but at a slow, leisurely pace, single file with Steve at the front, Sam in the middle holding the flashlight, and Bucky bringing up the rear.

With a plan in place, Sam forces himself back onto his feet with a groan. It's easier when he has directives to focus on, turning off his brain in order to follow orders the way the Air Force had taught him to first thing. 

Noting Sam's increasingly hobbling gait, Bucky shoots Sam a brief guilty look when Steve isn't looking. Sam winks back at him.

They finally make it into Calumet around 2 a.m., and it's such a small town that the single chain hotel they have is unmanned. There are instructions taped to the front desk written with Sharpie that say to call a number if they want to check in, and when they do it becomes clear that they're waking someone to drive over to take their fake names and fake credit cards and hand them their keys. They apologize for the inconvenience, but the person on call just waves them off with a yawn and goes back home. They drag their bedraggled asses up to their rooms and collapse into bed. Sam doesn't even remember taking his head hitting the pillow—he remembers walking into his room, and then the next thing he knows he's opening his eyes and it's nearly nine in the morning.

They order room service and gather a fistful of complimentary 'Welcome to Calumet' vistors' guides for a breakfast meeting in Steve's room. It becomes apparent that there are no places to rent a car in this town. Everyone arrives _by_ car, and so there's no need. The best plan they can come up with is for them to hitchhike with someone to the nearest city.

"It has to be Steve," Sam points out. 

"Why not all three of us?" Steve asks.

"No one's going to drive three strange men and be outnumbered. Bucky looks rough as hell, ain't nobody gonna pick him up. And if I try to get into a car with someone my black ass is getting shot. So it has to be Steve."

Steve lifts his eyebrows at Bucky. Bucky shrugs.

"Alright, let me go make myself look as respectable and harmless as possible then," Steve says, crumpling up his napkin and tossing it onto the streaky traces of syrup and grease on his empty plate.

He disappears into the bathroom and the sound of running water starts shortly. Sam is sitting on the end of Steve's bed and Bucky has pulled up one of the poorly re-upholstered chairs so they can share the small single table between them. They eat in companionable silence.

Steve comes back out with his blond hair slicked back and his face scrubbed shiny clean, smelling of roses, and despite the fact that his clothes are covered in the dust of a billion roads he still manages to look like he's on his way to church.

Sam busts out laughing, and tells Steve he should text a selfie to Sharon to show her how ready he is to meet her folks. At that, Bucky starts cackling as well.

"If you don't stop that right now, I'm not coming back for you," Steve warns. "I'm going to get a car and drive right off—"

"To Sharon," Bucky interjects.

Sam howls with laughter, and Steve leaves in a huff.

And then Sam and Bucky are alone together for the first time in quite a few days.

Sam finishes his waffles unhurriedly, licking his lips and lingering on the last bit of soggy strawberries sitting in melting cream for way too long. He can feel the weight of Bucky's gaze on him. When he finally pushes his plate back, Bucky shoves aside the entire table so hard it tips over. Luckily for them, the floor is covered in carpet and nothing breaks in Bucky's mad scramble to climb onto Sam. 

They're making out hot and heavy, Bucky's knees bracketing either side of Sam's hips, his hands kneading Sam's shoulders and his teeth biting Sam's throat whenever they're not biting Sam's lips. Sam's acutely aware that they're actually on Steve's bed and he doesn't want to necessarily go all the way without a change of location, but every time he thinks about suggesting it he gets distracted by Bucky's tongue. 

Bucky grinds his hips against Sam's and Sam slips his hands between them, but Bucky isn't hard. Not even a little bit. He's completely flaccid, and Sam can work with that, he presses the heel of his hand into Bucky's pelvis and rubs in circular motions, drawing it out nice and dirty, and Bucky moans but he doesn't get hard.

"Alright, time out," Sam pants, drawing back. "You alright?"

Bucky looks down at his own crotch in consternation, like he's surprised. 

"Oh, sorry, guess I'm out of Viagra."

"Hold on, you take Viagra?"

Bucky shrugs. "It's not you, it's all the electroshock they did on me. It happens to me sometimes when I'm masturbating too. Really annoying."

His tone is completely casual, and Sam knows that he's supposed to match him in his level of nonchalance, as difficult as that may be. He clenches his fists. "So...uh, where do you get your Viagra from?"

Bucky shrugs again. "Swipe it from drugstores when we pass through."

They fall into silence. Bucky tries to re-initiate the kissing but honestly, Sam needs a few moments. After a few times of being pushed away, Bucky lets out a frustrated growl and says, "What?"

Sam puts his hands on either side of Bucky's face so he can hold him still while looking at him. "You know you don't have to do that, right?"

"Well, it's prescription only and going to see a doctor for dick medication isn't exactly a great way of staying under the radar."

"No, I mean take it at all. We don't have to fuck all the time. I'm not—that's not the only reason I like being alone with you."

Bucky stares at Sam for a long minute, and it feels significant, like they're coming to some sort of understanding, but then Bucky rolls his eyes and says, "I like fucking you all the time. You've got a nice ass. It's not exactly a hardship."

Sam quirks the corner of his lips upwards. "Yeah, okay fine, point taken. But you get what I'm saying, right?"

Bucky sighs deeply, like it hurts his soul how boring this conversation is, and he swings one leg up and over so he's sitting beside Sam rather than on him. " _Yeah, okay fine, point taken_ ," he says in a snotty imitation that sounds nothing like Sam. 

Sam swats his chest, which is a futile exercise because it literally feels like slapping granite. He lets the back of his hand trail down Bucky's body until it rests on top of his hand. He kind of just leaves it there until Bucky takes the hint and flips his palm up, intertwining their fingers. 

They sit in a comfortable silence, and eventually Sam dips his head so he can rest it against Bucky's shoulder. Steve should be gone for hours at least, and he trusts Bucky's advanced hearing abilities to get them out of Steve's bed long before he can find them cuddling in it. He lets his eyes slip closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter of DISGUSTING FILTH. The final chapter will be posted next week, whenever the intrepid Adi_Rotynd finishes beta-reading for me! In the meantime, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/post/151079052752/a-dangerous-lifestyle-archive-of-our-own). I plan to post a few deleted scenes/DVD extras there so if you're interested, that's where they'll be.


	3. Chapter 3

Their search takes them to California a couple of weeks later, which is…weird. All three of them have been based in the East Coast for so much of their lives that there's a palpable cultural difference. Everyone wears flip flops with goddamn everything, and everyone appears to be overly concerned with having the perfect beach hair. Sam has no idea what 'beach hair' even fucking means.

There are upsides to being in Orange County, though. They blend in with the droves of tourists, which means they can hide in plain sight within civilization. They don't have to camp out, or worse, stay in motels with a bedbug population larger than the whole town. And it's pretty, too, Sam has to grudgingly admit. The weather is perfect every single day, and the ocean glitters like a blue jewel next to Pacific Coast Highway.

"The palm trees look so perfect that I'm, like, borderline mad at them," he tells Bucky.

Bucky shrugs lazily and says, "I've been to a lot more places than you have. Seen a lot nicer scenery."

"Okay, it's not a competition, you don't have to one-up me."

"I'm not competing, just stating a fact. I've seen a lot of the world."

"Wait, is this you trying to impress me? Are you trying to impress me with all your worldly experience as brainwashed global assassin?"

"That depends," Bucky says blandly, "are you impressed?"

Sam outright laughs at him.

They're in the car waiting for Steve to check them into a place for the night again. It's never inconspicuous for the three of them to be seen together, so Sam or Steve alternate check-in duty depending on who would stand out the least. Bucky, of course, never stands out the least. Steve, with his blond hair and chiseled physique, looks like he could've been born and raised in Laguna, except for his lack of flip flops. So this time he's the one who goes, and he's the one who comes back holding three key cards while whistling a jaunty tune like some asshole.

"Hey, look! You two didn't start squabbling like a couple of toddlers as soon as I left you alone! I'd call this progress," he says, opening the driver's side door to put a parking pass on the dash.

"Actually, Wilson here was just mocking my experiences as a prisoner of war. It was very traumatizing."

"Not as traumatizing as having to look at your ugly face all day."

"I regret bringing it up," Steve announces.

They turn in to their respective rooms, deciding to get a good night's sleep so they can get an early start the next morning. After taking a few long moments to enjoy some rare solitude, Sam takes a nice long shower, puts on clean clothes, and sneaks out to Bucky's room.

Bucky greets him with a bottle of water in one hand and a little blue pill in the other. He makes a show of tossing the pill down his gullet and guzzling half the bottle of water, then says, "Thirty minutes until this kicks in, and then you'll have to beat me off your ass with a stick."

"What if that had been Steve at the door? That would've been a really weird way to greet him."

"If you think I can't recognize your footsteps outside, you got another think coming, dollface."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Watching you take your dick pills and being called outdated endearments, that's exactly how I've always wanted to be wooed."

"I know it is," Bucky says, crowding up against Sam and taking his mouth in a wet kiss. He pushes him up against the wall next to the door and holds him there while he reacquaints himself with Sam's tongue, biting his lips whenever he pulls away to suck in a much-needed breath before diving back in. 

It doesn't take a full thirty minutes for Bucky to get hard. 

Sam would've happily made out with him for much longer, but Bucky isn't in a patient mood. He picks him up by the waist and tosses him onto the bed, crawling up the length of his body and tossing aside articles of clothing as he encounters them. He then proceeds to prove exactly why it's worth the risk for him to continue swiping Viagra from drugstores at every opportunity. Sam is thoroughly convinced by his argument. 

They head out early to chase down their lead: an office space masquerading as a high-end real estate agency to cover up some of Hydra's funding stream. They enter in formation armed to the teeth, but they already know it's too late by the time they step foot inside. The place has been wiped clean, nothing left but empty cubicles with office chairs pushed neatly in. Any computers that might have been there are gone. They pull out every drawer just in case but every single one is bare save for the occasional paperclip left behind.

Steve does find a wastepaper basket inside the cabinet under the sink in what must have been the lunchroom, though. He turns it upside down and pokes through the pile of crumpled napkins and printer paper with a pen. There's an old inter-office envelope buried in there, empty but with an address written on the front.

Borrego Valley. Two and a half hours' drive away, way the fuck out in the desert. Exactly the kind of place no one would go looking the offices of a vast neo-Nazi conspiracy.

The laser focus of being in an active op wears off for Sam once they leave, and he suddenly feels exhausted. Just the idea of a long afternoon drive in the desert heat makes him groggy already. He's reminded once again of how much special supersoldier serum is _not_ coursing through his body. He should've gotten more sleep last night.

"Hey, I gotta hit up a coffee shop before we hit the road," Sam says. "I'm dying for some caffeine."

Steve assents without question and pulls up in front of a hippie little indie café, the fair trade organic free range whatever kind that's all over Laguna.

"I'll go with him," Bucky says, because he's developed a bit of a sweet tooth for iced coffee.

"You want anything?" Sam asks Steve, who says he's good.

Little bells above the door jingle as Sam and Bucky enter the air-conditioned shop. There's a long line ahead of them, but they're not in any real hurry. If whatever's out in the desert is still there, a few minutes won't make any difference. Sam orders an Americano with an extra shot of espresso, and Bucky gets something cold and sweet and soggy with whipped cream. 

There's a bit of a wait before their order is ready, and Sam excuses himself to use the restroom.

He swears to god he locked the door behind himself, but Bucky pushes in a few seconds after.

"How—"

"Jimmied the lock," Bucky says casually, before sinking down onto his knees and unbuttoning Sam's jeans along the way.

"Bucky," Sam says, which isn't a yes but isn't exactly a no. They have at most five minutes before they would have to grab their coffee and go. The time constraint shouldn't make things sexier, but somehow it does, as does the idea that there's a bustling business with tons of customers just on the other side of a definitely not soundproof door. Sam's skin feels tight and hot, like he's thrumming with too much energy just underneath and he's liable to burst at any moment. He can hear people's footsteps when they pass by the restroom door, can hear muffled conversations and the occasional clear burst of sharp sounds like laughter or cutlery being dropped. Everything feels so _close_.

Bucky draws Sam's cock out of his boxers. He's already hard as a rock, the precariousness of the situation doing as much for him as any foreplay. Bucky doesn't waste any time teasing him, just opens his mouth and bobs on the swollen head a few times before opening his throat and swallowing him all the way down.

The last coherent thought Sam has is, "Well fuck, this isn't going to make me less sleepy on the ride after." And then his brain blanks out everything else and his world narrows in on the sensation of Bucky's lips wrapped tight around his shaft, his tongue massaging the underside of his cock, the muscles in his throat spasming against him. 

Even Winter Soldiers have to breathe, though, and eventually Bucky resurfaces, pulling away with a pop of suction that almost makes Sam's knees buckle. His near-stumble makes Bucky grin, stretching his soft, swollen, well-fucked lips into a smile. He flicks his tongue out, first to catch the spit at the corner of his mouth, and then again to swirl it against the throbbing head of Sam's cock.

Sam lifts one hand away from where he's gripping Bucky's hair and presses the back of it against his own mouth, biting the knuckles to muffle his desire to cry out.

The fear of getting caught pricks at the edges of his consciousness, heightening his arousal. When Bucky dives in again he very nearly does fall over, crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut. Without removing a single inch of Sam's cock from his mouth, Bucky quickly wraps both hands around Sam's hips and slams him back, holding him up against the wall. 

Sam comes with a choked whimper.

Bucky swallows, and keeps swallowing even when Sam has nothing left to give. He only lets Sam slip out of his mouth when Sam pushes at his shoulders because it's too much. Sam's over-sensitive cock twitches helplessly on Bucky's tongue. With one last lick, Bucky finally backs off and shifts his weight, sitting onto his haunches with a self-satisfied expression.

Without Bucky's hands to hold him up, Sam slides down the wall into a heap. His eyelids are heavy and he can feel the post-orgasmic haze clouding his mind already. In a daze, it takes him a while to notice that a woman is yelling outside, has been for a while.

"Bunty? Bunty? BUNTY?"

Sam screws up his face in a heroic effort to think. "Is she…is she calling _you_?"

Bucky jolts out of his smug contemplation of Sam's blissed-out face and says, "Shit, our drinks must be ready." He stands up and turns on the cold water in the sink, swishing some in his mouth and spitting before patting down his hair. "Come on," he says to Sam, offering him a hand up. 

Sam takes Bucky's hand and forces himself to his feet. He does his pants back up with a groan.

"BUNTY!" the barista calls again, and Bucky hurries to the counter to grab the two cups waiting for them. 

He hands Sam his piping hot Americano, which has "Charles" scrawled messily on the side in sharpie.

"Did you use 'Bunty' as an alias?" Sam asks. "Funny sounding name."

"No, I said Bucky, they just always get your name wrong at places like this," he replies nonchalantly.

"Wait, you gave them your real name? We're _on the run, Bunty_ ," Sam scolds as they head back out to the car.

"I assessed the risk and concluded there was zero likelihood that the teenager behind the counter at Koffee Klatch was Hydra," Bucky says in return. 

"Yeah, but you don't know who else could've been in there."

"You didn't seem to worry about that when you put yourself in a very exposed position with your most vulnerable parts out—"

Sam kicks him in the shins as they get into the car. 

"What took you so long?" Steve asks, giving them a weird look.

"The baristas wrote our names down wrong, we didn't know they were calling us so we just stood around waiting for way longer than we needed to," Sam says, which isn't completely a lie. "They called Bucky 'Bunty,'" he tells Steve, knowing it will make him laugh.

Steve guffaws, and Sam laughs too because he's pleased that he knows what Steve finds funny. Bucky shoots them both a woebegone look that makes Sam laugh even harder. It's nice to start the ride with laughter, since the rest of it only gets progressively hotter and more boring. 

Sam is glad he had the foresight to pump himself full of caffeine, as beautifully landscaped yards of millionaires and the friendly waving palm trees of Orange County slowly give way to bush scrub, craggy rocks, and hot sand. There are flowering cactuses too, which Sam is surprised to find beautiful. He had been to war in the desert. There hadn't been any flowers there.

The only speck of civilization in the Anza-Borrego area is a resort village called Borrego Springs, which has more tourists than residents on any given day. That's not where they're going.

The tract of land they figure they're looking for is out in no-man's land. The road turns to gravel, to sand, to something barely distinguishable from the rest of the desert. The rental car isn't built for this kind of terrain and they're probably going to fry the transmission, but it hardly matters since they can't risk returning it anyway. 

Although they don't know exactly what they're looking for, they do know they've found it as soon as they see it. The building that looks like a metal barn has no business being out in the middle of nowhere, and neither do the helipads next to it. 

From what they can see, there are no helicopters or any other vehicles. It's probably vacant, since no one's getting out here on foot and the likelihood of someone living in an abandoned Hydra compound seems slim. Still, just to be safe, Steve takes them behind a hill and they park out of sight of the building, so they can arm themselves and decide on a tactical attack together.

Sam gets a flash of déjà vu, remembering the last time they had exited their car armed to the teeth to look for traces of Hydra. They had found Maria instead, which taught them to expect the unexpected. And then of course he and Bucky had fucked in some collapsing old house, which taught Sam to always carry a little foil packet of lube with him just in case. That particular memory raises goosebumps up his arms and down the back of his neck, and he shakes it off. Now is really not a good time for a trip down memory lane.

Steve makes eye contact with him, checking if he's okay. He gives him a firm up-nod. 

Steve and Bucky knock fists. The three of them step out of the car.

They approach the building from behind, crouching low. Sam would feel better if they were wearing some sort of camouflage, but even without it he feels his body falling back into old instincts long saved in his muscle memory. He knows how to move in the desert. He knows how to fight in it.

There's a keypad regulating the entrance they find, but Bucky makes quick work of it by pulling it open and crossing some wires inside. They enter with their backs to each other, covering all angles in a triangle formation. 

The halls are empty. There are too few windows to truly light up the place and so it feels like they've been thrown into a dusky twilight. Bucky and Steve can probably see decently, but Sam is operating half blind, which makes him edgy. It also makes him edgy that nothing looks neglected despite how deserted the place seems to be. There's no dust on the floor, no cobwebs in the corners. It's too clean—too maintained.

It would be more efficient to split up and cover more ground, but none of them want to take the risk. They slowly go through the entire building, stopping at each door to either open it or kick it down, doing thorough sweeps of every room. It's tedious and time-consuming, almost repetitive enough to lull Sam into boredom, if it weren't for that constant looming sense of unease gnawing at the edges of his mind.

They finally hit the jackpot when they discover some kind of server room. The power is still running on some of them, which is yet another clue that this place isn't as empty as it appears. But that's _good_ news, Sam reminds himself. They're _trying_ to find Hydra—finding what's left of them is the only thing that's going to let Bucky lead a somewhat normal life again.

Sam and Steve station themselves at the door of the room while Bucky goes to work with a slim laptop, some connector cables, and a USB stick. None of them speak, not wanting to make any extra noise to give themselves away, but Sam raises his eyebrows at Steve and cocks his head.

Steve nods grimly in return, confirming that he too had noticed that this place is almost definitely still occupied to some capacity.

Even expecting the presence of enemy combatants, though, it's still a surprise when a panel in the wall slides up, revealing Hydra agents who come out shooting. 

Sam curses and ducks, returning fire. 

"What the hell, guys," Bucky says, still typing furiously.

"In our defence," Sam yells, pulling the pin from a smoke grenade on his belt and rolling it across the hall at the rapidly advancing Hydra operatives, "we were not expecting secret passages!"

Steve pushes Sam with his full strength, sending him sprawling—practically flying, really—into the server room as new bullet holes appear on the wall previously behind him. Steve slams the door shut. "I don't know how long we can keep them out of this room," he says. 

"The good news is I'm done with this room," Bucky says, saving something to the USB. "The bad news is now we're trapped in it."

"Thanks so much for the helpful commentary."

"Not now, children," Steve grits out as someone outside opens fire on the door. The lock will probably be totaled in about five seconds.

Bucky is the one who finds an opening to an air duct, which feels too easy. It's too much like every corny action movie; there can't just be a convenient duct large enough for three pretty hefty men to fit inside. But it's a supervillain facility with hidden passages in the walls, and they can't afford to look a gift horse in the mouth at the moment because it's not like there's any other way out. 

Sam hauls himself up after Bucky, swatting his hand away in annoyance when he turns around to offer to help Sam up. Steve brings up the rear and drops a flashbang behind them for the Hydra agents starting to stream into the room.

They army crawl as quickly as they can, Sam feeling increasingly compressed between two men who could obviously do it much faster if he weren't in the way. Soon, he loses all sense of direction with nothing to look at besides duct, duct, more duct, and Bucky's ass. He just has to trust that Bucky knows where he's going.

After a few minutes it sounds like there are people below them, but before Sam can fully process the implications of this fact, he's surprised by gunshots for the second time today.

The bullets pierce the sheet metal with ease and ricochet like a bitch. Sam opens his mouth to say something to Bucky, but it turns into a yelp when he feels an excruciating burning sensation tear through his right anterior deltoid. 

Well, fuck.

There's a lot of yelling, which Sam doesn't think is a great idea because it's just going to give their position away even more. Bucky fires back by shooting through the duct below them, which Sam thinks is an even worse idea because if it disintegrates then they're going to fall through the damn thing directly into a nest of vipers. He tries to shove Bucky forward, make him keep moving, because stalling now is certain death. But his one arm won't quite work and Steve isn't helping and just fuck his life. Fuck all of this, really.

Crawling with one arm is nearly impossible, so Bucky has no choice but to stop being dumb eventually, because he has to help drag Sam along. Being jostled and tugged with a fresh gunshot wound feels just great, fucking delightful. Sam clamps his teeth shut and tries not to make too much noise. 

Steve is helping, Sam assumes, because it's Steve, but he can't quite tell how. The adrenaline makes everything feel a bit like someone hit the fast forward button, and when that wears off Sam finds it hard to pay attention anymore.

"Come on, stay with me," Bucky grunts as he hauls Sam around a bend in the duct by holding him around the neck and one armpit like a lifeguard. Sam rolls his eyes because it's a pretty cliché line. 

"I _am_ with you," he says, surprised by how thin his own voice sounds. "Blood loss is definitely at less than fifteen percent right now, we've got a while before hemorrhagic shock, I'm barely at class one."

"Okay, great, keep diagnosing yourself, don't pass out."

"Were you not listening? I'm not going to pass out, my blood pressure is probably still within normal range."

"You're doing great," Steve says behind him. 

Sam isn't sure how, but Bucky actually manages to get them to a part of the ductwork that exits directly into the open air outside.

He rams the grate open with his metal arm. There's not enough room for them to sit up or turn around, so Bucky dives head-first towards the ground and lands into a graceful forward roll. Sam doesn't think he could manage that even when he isn't bleeding from a brand new hole in his body. 

"Oh boy, here we go," he mutters.

Steve doesn't just let him drop on his face like a sack of potatoes, but rather keeps a grip on his ankles and lowers him down like they're the world's saddest trapeze act. Bucky catches him in a fireman's carry, and then Steve jumps down and they're off, sprinting across the desert to where they'd left the car.

Sam bounces on Bucky's back and watches his own blood drip hot onto the sand like Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail. 'This is familiar,' he thinks vaguely to himself, but this time there are no wings on his shoulders and no dog tags around his neck.

They toss Sam into the back of the car, Bucky scuttling into the backseat with him even though there's not really enough room for the both of them, what with Sam being half horizontal. Steve jumps behind the wheel and floors it out of there.

The fact that they didn't see any vehicles near the compound means they probably have some sort of advantage, but there's no guarantee Hydra don't have some crazy armored personnel carrier stashed underground or something. They don't stick around to find out.

"Your pulse is getting a little weak," Bucky says, one hand clamped around the entry wound with a bandage.

"That would be hypovolemia," Sam says. "My skin's feeling a little cold too."

Bucky flails around until he finds his jacket and drapes it over Sam. Sam isn't sure it helps, but okay. 

Now that he's no longer distracted by the immediate danger they were in, Sam figures out that he can't feel an exit wound. What he feels instead is a dull throbbing in his collarbone, different from the other burning pain, and he's pretty sure that means the bullet got lodged in his clavicle. Someone's going to have to extract that bitch.

"We need to get you to a hospital," Steve says. 

"No way," Sam says immediately.

"But you're—"

"The hospital will report the gunshot wound to the police, and then what?" 

"And then we'll figure something out! At least then you won't get an infection and die or have a dangling useless arm for the rest of your life!"

"No, shut up, let me think—"

"Sam—"

"Shut up!" Sam reserves the right to be a little snappy because his shoulder really fucking hurts, and it's getting worse the more his adrenaline high fades. His entire upper right side feels like it's on fire every time they hit a bump on the road, which at these speeds on these roads is pretty much constantly. Also, Bucky is staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and it's really fucking unnerving. "Drive us to Rincon del Diablo," Sam decides.

"Do it," Bucky says to Steve, "There's a hospital in Escondido."

"Yeah, we're not going to that part," Sam tells them.

Sam can tell from the way the back of Steve's jaw shifts that he is now gritting his teeth very hard. "Then where the hell are we going?" he asks, voice sounding as tight as the grip he has on the steering wheel.

"I have an Air Force buddy who lives in a trailer out there. He's bugfuck crazy but he's a good medic. He won't sell us out to anyone."

The rest of the drive goes by in a pained, hazy blur. Sam isn't entirely sure how they get there, even though he must have been the one to give them directions. He vaguely registers several arguments between Bucky and Steve over Steve's driving speed—not fast enough in the desert, and then _What are you, crazy?! We're gonna get pulled over!!_ once they're within sight of Escondido. 

Sam somehow finds the wherewithal to instruct Steve to get out of the car once they're parked alongside the rundown farmhouse off a dirt road just barely in The Devil's Corner. "Go knock on the door with your hands up and clearly empty, tell Miguel you have me with you and I took one to the shoulder."

"Okay…" Steve says, eyeing the barbed wire fence around the property, the boarded up windows.

"I told you, he's crazy. He probably clocked us coming in way ahead of time, but this'll show you mean no harm."

Steve does as he's told. Bucky slings Sam's good arm over his shoulder and gets ready to haul him into the house as soon as he gets the okay.

Things fast forward in another blur as Sam's head swims. He doesn't remember getting out of the car or in through the door, though he gets a fuzzy impression that Miguel is making fun of him in Spanish for getting sidelined by one measly bullet. 

There's a loud clatter of empty beer cans hitting the floor as someone sweeps a mess off a large dining table and then lays him on top of it. Miguel starts cutting his shirt away with a pair of kitchen scissors.

"Is that sterile?" Bucky asks.

Miguel turns to say something in response, probably to tell him to shut the fuck up, but then he does a double take when he gets a better look at Bucky, specifically at his arm and at the fact that the blond next to him must be Captain America. "What the fuck kind of mess you got yourself into this time?" he says to Sam instead.

"Literally do not even ask," Sam says.

Miguel stays off the grid, gets his mail delivered to a PO box instead of his house, doesn't even have a landline. He doesn't need to be told twice.

He finds his med kit under a pile of crumpled coats in the hall closet, pulls on one single latex glove almost sarcastically, like he's making a show of making things _sterile_ just to appease Bucky. He probes Sam's shoulder and says, "You're hella lucky this bounced straight into your collarbone without hitting anything important."

"Can you get it out?"

Miguel doesn't even dignify that with words, just says "Pssshhhh." A single extraction, indoors, on an unmoving platform without IEDs going off or anyone throwing bombs at them? Walk in the park.

He grabs a glass from the dishwasher and pours isopropyl to the brim, dips his scalpels into it. He fills a syringe with morphine and sticks it in Sam's arm.

Steve and Bucky flutter around them like nervous birds.

"Wanna make yourselves helpful? Go get us a couple of beers from the fridge," Miguel suggests.

"Should you be mixing alcohol with morphine?" Steve asks worriedly.

"Oh my _god_ ," Miguel says. 

Bucky goes because he doesn't like when people imply he's a square. Steve ends up following him because he doesn't like to watch Sam getting cut into. Sam sits back and relaxes, because the morphine's real good.

Miguel finishes up and then stitches him shut with one hand, can of beer in the other hand. "Morphine'll take about four hours to wear off. You guys okay sitting tight for that long, or will you bring whoever's chasing after you straight to my door?"

Sam has no idea how to answer that, since he wasn't fully mentally present for their escape. Bucky and Steve do their silent communication thing and Steve nods. "It should be fine. But I might go ditch the car somewhere else just in case." 

Steve leaves Bucky behind to watch over Sam. Miguel helps move Sam onto the couch so he can lie back semi-comfortably. Sam grips his wrist and says, "Thanks, Doc." He means not just for this, but for everything, all the years between them and the people they've saved together, the times they had each other's backs, the times they put each other back together.

Miguel shrugs and says, "You can repay me by never getting me involved in whatever the hell you're caught up in."

"Deal."

Miguel cleans up his dining room table and then leaves the room to give Bucky and Sam some privacy, ostensibly so they can talk without accidentally giving Miguel information Tony Stark might send someone to interview him about.

Instead of saying anything about what he managed to get off the Hydra computers or where they should go next, however, Bucky just sits next to the couch and holds Sam's hand.

Sam is floating on lovely soft cloud of drowsiness and not feeling his shoulder at all. He knows this level of spaced out bliss isn't going to fly when they have to get back on the road, and he isn't looking forward to what that will mean for his pain levels. A squeeze on his hand brings his attention away from that train of thought and he turns to look at Bucky.

Bucky clears his throat. He keeps clutching Sam's hand.

"What?" 

His eyes look suspiciously like they might be just a little bit wet. "I just want to say, in case anything happens…I just wanted you to know…" He trails off and doesn't finish his sentence.

"Oh my god, are you trying to confess your love at my bedside?"

Bucky's face immediately snaps to a defensive expression, all softness gone. "You got _shot_ , asshole."

"I'm obviously fine now, don't be such a cliché, Bunty."

"Will you let me be romantic just once? Fuck."

Sam laughs. The situation feels completely surreal, and the drugs aren't helping. "So does this mean we should finally tell Steve? Since we know where we want the relationship to go and all?"

"Sam. Come on. I think Steve knows. He's probably known for a while, since he has enhanced senses and all. He's probably just been waiting for us to officially tell him because his mother raised him with good manners."

His mother also apparently raised him with an impeccable sense of timing, because Steve chooses that moment to waltz back into the house and say, "Yes, Steve _has_ known for a while, and Steve is very happy for you guys."

Sam feels like he's simultaneously on way too many narcotics and also not enough narcotics to deal with this right now. 

"I've known since you guys snuck off at Mandan, you are not a subtle couple."

Sam groans. 

"Actually, we started sleeping together a little bit before Coldwater," Bucky corrects, because for some reason this jerk now wants Steve to know every last detail, even though he was the one who wanted to keep it a secret in the first place.

"That's impressive, you managed to keep it under wraps for over a week, wow," Steve says.

"Man, shut up. Sorry we didn't tell you, we just didn't want you to get your hopes up about us getting together until we knew for sure it would even last. We can't all be like you and Sharon, flaunting your relationship to the universe," Sam says, finally getting his wits together enough to give as good as he's getting.

Steve makes indignant noises, but underneath the veneer of mock affront Sam can tell Bucky was right all along: Steve is really fucking delighted that his two best friends are together. A smile lingers on his face no matter what other expression he's making, and he can't seem to stop clapping Bucky on the shoulder.

When they're ready to get back on the road, Miguel tells them to take his truck.

"Doc, we can't accept that," Sam says, already feeling sweaty and nauseous from the pain creeping back in. "That's too big a favor."

"It was already a pretty big favor when you brought a full set of wanted fugitives to my doorstep," he points out. "Might as well make it a jackpot."

"We'll get rid of it once we're far enough away," Steve promises. "No one's ever going to connect that truck to you or us or anything. And we'll wire you money for it as soon as we're secure again."

Miguel waves off that idea. "I don't spend my disability checks on anything besides porn, I can afford a new truck. It'll be good to have Captain America owe me a favor."

"Anything you need in the future, we have your back 100%," Steve says solemnly, clasping him in a handshake. 

Bucky is less verbose about it but he shakes Miguel's hand too, a silent vow of allegiance.

Sam goes for a hug, albeit gingerly, nursing his newly dressed wound. "Take care of yourself," he says, and Miguel shoos him off.

They pile into the truck and immediately start arguing with each other over the cramped quarters. As Steve drives, Bucky starts filling them in on what he managed to lift from the Hydra computers. There wasn't enough there to clear his name, nothing even referred directly to the Winter Soldier project, but there are files on still-active personnel and he's sure some of them will be worth taking in alive for questioning.

Sam lets Bucky's words wash over him, only half listening. They'll fill him in if there's anything he needs to know—otherwise, it's best if he can truthfully say to a tribunal that he had no idea what they were planning. He's been following them all this time on trust alone, and he feels completely comfortable keeping on the same way. The only thing that's changed now is that he can lay his head on Bucky's shoulder when he gets tired. Bucky can put his arm around him, half out of affection and half to keep him from being jostled around too much, and Steve doesn't even blink. Sam closes his eyes and doesn't worry about where they're going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking with me all the way to the end of this adventure! I made a little aesthetic thing for this fic [here](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/post/151527803732/hey-look-you-two-didnt-start-squabbling-like-a), and you can find a little outtake/cut scene about the ending [here on my tumblr](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/post/155234177767/4-9-for-fic-meme). Feel free to chat to me about your Sam Wilson feelings if you'd like, and know that I appreciate your time even if we never get a chance to speak. And thank you again to Adi, the best beta reader and sammate a wretch could ever ask for. (Also for the record, she's the one who came up with "Bunty," which I think is the single funniest thing in this whole fic.)

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [tumblr](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/post/150705119892/a-dangerous-lifestyle-captain-america), where I sometimes post snippets and other [fic adjacent things](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-adjacent).
> 
> Endless thanks to [adirotynd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/adi_rotynd/pseuds/adi_rotynd) for beta-reading, fact-checking, cheerleading, and generally being the best brain twin anyone could ask for.
> 
> I promise the fic is complete, I'm just waiting on Adi to finish editing the last chapter. If this chapter didn't have enough of a cliffhanger for you, how about this: the next chapter will feature the filthiest fucking sex scene I've ever written in my life.


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